Most Popular Gold and Silver Coins and Bars

(JH MINT Sales and Purchase Volume Data)

 

Silver Stock Report

by Jason Hommel, May 18th, 2012
Here’s the link to tables of JH MINT Sales data without commentary.
http://jhmint.com/reports.html
People who are ready to buy silver and gold often ask us, “Which should I buy?” and “What’s the most popular?”  It’s the one ounce silver round!   It’s the clear winner.
The sales volume data shows what’s popular, and by how much.  To my knowledge, no other bullion dealer has published such data ever.  Thus, this is very important industry data.  It should be linked, and discussed and cross referenced by those who would comment on the physical bullion market.
The data reveals much.  One of my favorite points is that it exposes a lot of fraud.
Don’t ever believe it when fraudsters who vault your bullion in the form of 1000 oz. bars, claim that one ounce rounds are not popular, or that it’s “too difficult” or “too costly” to manufacture these popular silver products.
Note, the data covers the period from August 2010 to April 2012, which is 1.75 years, or a year and 9 months.
We sold a total of $33.9 million, and bought a total of $13 million worth of silver and gold from the public.  We have excluded purchases from wholesalers, or sales to refiners, which would have offset the difference, and would have helped to balance the numbers.  So, the numbers reflect what the public is buying and selling and doing and choosing to do, not what dealers buy or sell or have to do to serve the public demand.
Overall, it’s important to note that silver one ounce rounds are the most popular item, both in sales and purchases.  Since they are the most popular of purchases as well, this says that silver one ounce rounds were the most popular item of the last ten to twenty years.  Since sales of silver one ounce rounds were 23.6% of all sales, and purchases were 11.6% of all purchases, this says that they are only growing in popularity.  We didn’t sell “twice as many as we bought”, we really sold $8 million worth of one oz. rounds, while we bought $1.5 million, which is 5.3 times more.  To me, that suggests that one oz. rounds are 5.3 times more popular now (over the last two years), than they were “historically”.
Every now and then, people will sell the 100 oz. silver bars, or sell gold coins, just to convert into one ounce rounds, as people are growing in their awareness of the need to have a fungible, popular, barterable unit of tradable precious metal.
I believe this is a good trend.  It shows the growing awareness of the importance of fungibility, and it is helping the silver one ounce round to gain that fungibility that comes with being the most common unit of trade.
The sales data is showing that silver one ounce rounds are “becoming money”.
READ MORE